Rest Assured
}} Rest Assured was a proposed comedy drama that would be a spin-off from Coronation Street in much the same way as Pardon the Expression was between 1965 and 1966. The premise of the series was to follow the comic misfortunes of Street characters Ray Langton and Jerry Booth as played by Neville Buswell and Graham Haberfield and the series got as far as the recording of a half-hour pilot episode entitled Lift Off in 1972. For unknown reasons a series was never commissioned and although some sources (e.g. Internet Movie Database) state that the pilot was screened on Monday 20th November 1972 the programme does not appear in either the TV Times or newspaper television listings. It is possible that the date quoted was an intended broadcast date or even a recording date. The pilot was both written and produced by H.V. Kershaw and directed by Nick Burrell-Davis. Design work was handled by Denis Parkin who had been the first designer on Coronation Street in 1960 and designed every episode up to December 1963. Among the guest cast was Fred Feast who would appear in Coronation Street from 1975 to 1984 as Rovers potman Fred Gee. Although there was an accent on comedy it was not a sitcom and there was no audience laughter track. Location filming was conducted at Norris Towers (called Norville House in the episode) on Wilkinson Road, Heaton Norris, Stockport. The church seen in the title sequence (which ran without music) is St Mary's RC church on Roman Road, Heaton Norris. Although the two characters were demonstrably the same as in the parent programme, no mention of Coronation Street was made in the script and Ray's address was given as a flat in Montgomery Close, Little Moor. The master tape of the pilot still exists in the Granada archives. Lift Off Jerry and Ray are insurance salesmen and premium collectors and part of their customer round is in Norville House, a block of flats. Ray fancies the young and comely Mrs Johnson and she is not unwilling to reciprocate his advances but insists on his finding somewhere where the two could not be disturbed by friends, family or neighbours. When talking to the lift engineer in the flats, Ray is told that pressing a certain sequence of buttons will ensure that the lift will get stuck between the fourth and fifth floors and it would take an hour to free them. Ray sees an opportunity to get himself inside the stuck lift with Mrs Johnson but his plan goes wrong and instead he finds himself trapped with one of Jerry's customers, the kindly but nervous pensioner Mrs Heywood. He is further angered later on when a small boy, who knows the secret of how to trap the lift, stops it again - with Jerry and Mrs Johnson alone inside it... Cast *Jerry Booth - Graham Haberfield *Ray Langton - Neville Buswell *Mrs Johnson - Gwyneth Powell *Mrs Heywood - Betty Hardy *Beryl - Margaret Shevlin *The Engineer - Fred Feast *Mrs Minto - Ruth Kettlewell *The Boy - Bruce Watt Category:Coronation Street spin-offs